FINALLY, a solution to an annoying problem that has plagued me ever since Google Mobile Sync was born is here: Calendar color synchronization between Google Calendars and my iPhone’s calendar. My OCD itched so badly that I would end up changing my Google Calendar colors to match the seemingly random vomit that my iPhone’s calendar would choose.

In a nutshell, don’t use Google Mobile Sync for your calendar. Use CalDAV instead.

The picture above sums up one of the issues of online social networks today: We have multiple social circles in our offline (read: real) lives, yet when we join a large social networking platform like Facebook, all those circles become one large circle. As wonderfully cute and adorable as my kids are, I know that only a small subset of my Facebook friends really care to see the photos and videos I post.

In the case study above, Debbie had no idea that the comments she posted on photos posted by her college friends who own a gay bar were viewable by the 10-year-old kids in her swimming class.

Another great analogy is the wedding reception. For any of you who’ve gone through the pain of coming up with a seating arrangement for a wedding reception, you’ll understand. Why is it painful? All of your disparate social circles will be in the same room. How do you group them? That situation, to a degree, is what a large social networking platform is: all of your friends from all circles in your life in a large room milling about with you on a pedestal using a bullhorn to make announcements about what is going on in your life.

If you have a moment, I highly suggest checking out this study that was done by the fine folks at Google on social networking. It approaches social networking from a user experience design perspective, but I think the points that are brought to light are beneficial to any user of an online social networking platform.

As a friend of mine pointed out, Google’s business model is about gathering information on you, profiling essentially, in order to build an accurate marketing model. Knowing this, would you still use the Google Chrome OS?

Twitter evolved from being an SMS mailing list to an ubiquitous, constantly evolving social network platform. Some use it as a microblog, summing up a day’s or hour’s (or minute’s even) experience in 140 characters. Some use it as an easy way to update your Facebook Status. I see it as a never-ending conversation with “hundreds of your closest friends.”

With the microblog-purple project at code.google.com, you can now install a Twitter plugin for Pidgin and/or Adium. I’ve been using the Pidgin plugin for 10 minutes and I already love it. It really feeds the “conversational” mental model I have of Twitter.

The plugin provides all of your basic Twitter interface needs (e.g. replying, retweeting, favorite-ing) but what’s noticeably missing is a “direct message” link and the ability to view direct messages sent to you. The former is easily circumvented by just using the normal Twitter convention of prefixing a “d” before a username, but the latter doesn’t seem to have any workable solution.

All in all, though, I’m sold on this plugin (until the next best thing comes along).

When I logged into my GrandCentral account, I was given the option to keep GrandCentral or to upgrade to Google Voice. I’ve futzed around with the interface a little and am very impressed by its Gmail-like feel. I also tested out the free SMS capability and it works like a charm. 🙂